Much of this year's growth is expected to come from banks securitising loans that are already on their books and from an increase in American-style securitisation in other markets, especially European.

ECONOMIST: Bonds that rock and roll

In mortgage securitisation, for instance, the lender is supplanted by the broker, the loan originator, the servicer (who collects payments), the investor and the arranger, not to mention the rating agencies and mortgage-bond insurers.

ECONOMIST: Securitisation

No one knows exactly what the right balance of debt and equity is in an economy, but the shrinkage of securitisation in particular makes it more likely that the process of deleveraging will overshoot.

ECONOMIST: Banks will still make money, just less of it

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in simple mortgage securitisation and insuring: the only odd one out is AIG and that was an insurance company, not a bank at all.

FORBES: The Great Financial Crisis: What Really Happened

What is not in doubt is that the subprime crisis has exposed four deep flaws in the practice of securitisation.

ECONOMIST: Securitisation

Banks in Europe, including the UK, are far more important to the provision of credit than is the case in the US. Roughly, European banks provide 80% of our credit needs, compared with 20% in the US - where securitisation that allows investors to lend is massively more significant.

BBC: How business can bypass banks

Separately, international regulators and the President's Working Group (comprising America's Treasury, the Federal Reserve and others) are looking into securitisation's part in the crisis.

ECONOMIST: Securitisation

So, far from dispersing the risk, which is what securitisation should do, we ended up concentrating it in leveraged institutions because those running those leveraged institutions were stupid enough to think that the MBS stuff was all top notch, top drawer credit.

FORBES: The Real Cause of the Great Financial Crash

With private-label securitisation markets moribund, and capital-strapped banks pulling in their horns, Fannie and Freddie are close to being the only game in town.

ECONOMIST: America's housing bill

Reviving important non-bank funding sources, such as securitisation, is essential, even if its huge expansion in the credit boom led to the mispricing of risk.

ECONOMIST: America's bank bail-out

Under a system of purely local lending, a system with no securitisation, no packaging into bonds and no selling off to banks in far away places, we would still have seen banks toppling over like dominoes.

FORBES: Ezra Klein, The Financial Crash and Risk Dispersement